Emma Behr

Malini Foundation Summer 2015 Internship

Capstone Project
Mekalas Story
The first day I met Mekala for an interview, I waited for her to arrive at the
guesthouse where the Malini Foundations summer 2015 interns were staying in
Colombo, Sri Lanka. She walked through the door, tall and strong, with her eyes lowered,
smiling shyly. I liked her immediately.
It was decided that my internship capstone project would be to interview and tell
the story of Mekala, born Rumaiya Mekala Manimehalai, who is to be the housemother
of the Malini Foundations home for girls located near Hatton, Sri Lanka. Before I began
officially interviewing Mekala, I spent hours just getting to know her and we became fast
friends. Mekala speaks Sinhala and Tamil, and a good amount of English, but because I
do not speak Sinhala or Tamil, where there should have been a limiting language barrier,
I found there to be a special understanding between us.
Mekala has had an unimaginably difficult life. During our lengthy conversations,
Mekala shed tears as she relived bitter memories, and I shed tears as I struggled to
imagine the strife. I am not sharing her story to rouse sympathy and sadness, but because
Mekala wants her story told because she seeks to help young girls avoid some of the
hardships she faced all her life. It is with great honor that I now present Mekalas Story.
Mekala is in her thirties and was born in Badulla, a rural town in northern Sri
Lanka surrounded by lush rain forests and spectacular waterfalls. Mekala was born the
youngest in a family of six children, five girls and one boy. Mekala grew up very poor,
often without enough to eat. Her mother was a Sinhala Buddhist and her father was a

Tamil Hindu, the religions and cultures that found them selves on opposing sides during
the bloody civil war that lasted in Sri Lanka from 1983 until 2009. Her parents had had
an arranged marriage, and her mother was completely uneducated and illiterate; she could
only sign her name with her thumbprint. Her father had a relatively decent education at a
good school until he was in eleventh grade. He was literate and had some knowledge of
English in addition to Sinhala and Tamil. However, he was an alcoholic and worked odd
jobs, spending all her earned on alcohol, never thinking of his family. Mekala is most
saddened by the fact that he did not prioritize his family or his childrens education, and
that he was violently abusive towards her mother, making her bleed and need stiches on a
regular basis. He never hit his children, but Mekala soon realized that she did not love
him because of his alcoholism, abusiveness, and negligence, so she gradually distanced
herself from him until it was as if she never knew him. Her father died seven years ago.
When we spoke, Mekala venerated her mother for her strength, selflessness, and
goodness. While her father was drinking, her mother worked backbreaking jobs in order
to support her family. She worked in construction, road building, laying tar, and
housekeeping. Mekala recalled that her eldest sister would go straight from school, still in
her white school uniform, to the house where her exhausted mother worked to help her
with her chores because the work was much too much, long, and hard for just one person.
Once, her mother was so desperate to support her family that she spent days separating
sand out of mud in order to sell the sand. With tears in her eyes, Mekala said that despite
the abuse and destitution her mother faced, she never failed to work hard and love her
children. I did not ask for the details, but I understand that Mekalas mother committed
suicide by lighting herself on fire several years ago.

Mekala is full of respect for her siblings. Mekala told me with a smile that her
eldest sister takes after her mother in her selfless drive to help her family. Her sister
works in Oman as a housemaid, working tirelessly from four in the morning until ten at
night, cooking, cleaning, and caring for the familys children. She sends all of her money
back to her five siblings in Sri Lanka. She visits every few years for a couple of weeks
during the summer, bringing treats and cooking food for her family. This is Mekalas
favorite time of the year. Her eldest sister currently is having excruciating back problems
from her more than twenty years of working in Oman. She is returning to Sri Lanka this
summer for a short amount of time for treatment. Mekala is very sad for her pain,
suffering, and selflessness because she knows it was all for the betterment of herself and
her siblings.
Mekalas other sisters are also very poor and have children, and her brother is a
tuk tuk (a small, open taxi used across Sri Lanka and India) driver who hardly makes
enough to support his own family. Mekala loves her siblings and their children, and is
thrilled to be taking the job as the Malini Foundations housemother so that she too can
support her siblings and escape the cycle of her old life by enjoying the girls she will
work with as well as the breathtaking, bucolic scenery she will soon find herself
surrounded by.
Mekala has worked very hard already to support her family and herself. She
regrets now that she did not work very hard in school where she studied until eleventh
grade. However, her favorite subject was home science because she loves cooking,
especially Indian food. After her education, she worked for two years in Dubai and two
years in Oman as a housemaid, cooking, cleaning, caring for the familys children, and

fighting the grueling heat. After that, Mekala worked as a nanny and housekeeper for a
wealthy family in Colombo for four years. During her work with them, she was invited to
travel to Singapore with the family for a two-week vacation where she thoroughly
enjoyed herself. Mekala is currently in training at the Colombo branch of the SOS
Childrens Village to be Malinis housemother. When the house for girls is ready, Mekala
will care for four girls sponsored by Malini to live and study at the Hatton St. Gabriels
School for Girls. Mekala absolutely loves children and cares deeply about them.
Mekala does not have any children and never wants to marry because of how she
saw her father treat her mother and her family, but she loves children so she wants to
work with them. Because her father was mostly absent from her life, and her mother and
siblings were always busy working to stay alive, Mekala, the youngest sibling, has
always yearned for love, but she feels like she has a lot to give. She has always sought
love, and now seeks to give it to those who need it.
Another experience that made Mekala sure that she never wants to marry
happened while she was working for the wealthy family in Colombo, where her older
sister also worked. While there, she was introduced to the familys driver, a married man
who convinced her that his wife was evil, abusive, and cheating, and that he was going to
divorce his wife and marry Mekala. She fell in love and believed him, and even bought
her wedding dress. Then one day, her family went to his house to investigate his claims
and found that his wife was a very sweet woman and that he had just been lying, wanting
to use Mekala temporarily or to have two separate families. Mekala said that this
phenomenon of Sri Lankan boys tricking girls into being with them only to use them is a
serious, chronic problem. The girls and women targeted are usually the poor, love-

deprived girls who are the most vulnerable. Mekala wanted me to tell this part of her
story because she wants girls to learn from it and attempt to avoid such heartache and
suffering.
Mekalas story is not an easy one to read. Many people, after having lived a life as
trying as Mekalas, would be angry or bitter. Yet Mekalas smile truly lights up the room
she is in and her laughter is contagious. She is one of the kindest people I have ever met,
and she has all my respect. However, when I asked her if she thinks it has made her
stronger, she replied that it has instead weighed upon her very heavily and has made her
very sad. But Mekala is deeply convicted that she has suffered and existed for a very
specific purpose. She wants her story shared because she does not want others to have to
experience similar plights. In this way, Mekala is admirably selfless.